I don’t know why this is a problem or even surprising. There are few academic positions. Getting in and making it through the top schools is competitive and difficult. So why wouldn’t the best and brightest and most motivated and best networked beat everyone else out?
I’ve been to every kind of level of school (public, private, non-elite, elite). Whenever I’ve had someone from an elite background teaching at a non-elite place has made me feel better about the education I received, and was grateful for it! Relatedly, the expectations in the elite environments were substantially higher, which ended up producing better work from myself because of my peers, culture, and pressure than when I was lacking those in non-elite environments… despite the fact that I’m the same person.
I hate this trend perusing equality by lowering to the common denominator. That’s how you lose competitive edge in the world and end up with a mushy disinterested public. Talent is non-uniformly distributed… we should encourage and have ample mechanisms for the cream to rise to the top regardless of background. Finding ways to identify and prop up talent is what’s culturally lacking. I’ve seen it first hand countless times, and it’s saddened me each time because it’s so wasteful for society and the individuals. We need access to more elite institutions not less!
I have worked as a researcher in one of the most prestigious labs in Switzerland and the world, and I have not seen any correlation at all between how bright are people and where they studied.
We had visiting researchers from anywhere and I failed to see any correlation between the two things in years.
I can tell you none of the brightest came from cambridge uk or harvard us but universities you never heard of in southern italy or india.
Your entire argument that follows is delusional.
Nothing about going to Harvard makes you more qualified in maths, e.g. than going to any European public university you have not heard of. Education depends on the quality of teaching and learning, and most great professors in important universities excel at funding, not teaching.
Even when it comes to learning, especially in stem, you will likely learn more on books and internet and your course mates than your lectures. Hell, internet is filled with all the lectures you want from Harvard, MIT and more elite universities. As for any university in the world there are good and bad courses.
I can only speak to my experience, and experienced just about every major kind of environment (private elite small, public large, community college, regional state schools, elite universities). I’ve met great people everywhere, but in heavily uneven distribution. And in the less great environments, having a culture of either apathy, non-excellence, or simply not having so many great peers does little to motivate oneself, where as having the opposite is like a rocket ship. Videos on the internet are not a replacement for who is around you everyday. Your peers are a well establish major factor in determining your trajectory in life.
The uneven distribution will mean that MIT will put out a lot of great candidates, where as a state school will put out few great candidates. The people who went to MIT were in a culture that pushed them the entire time, so they’ll have maximized their talent, where as the state school lacking this culture will reward the same potential talent for less accomplishment. Thus you see this 80/20 rule manifest.
Btw the study was about American universities. I’m not sure why you’re being so defensive about Europe. It’s irrelevant to the point at hand. You could do the same study in France or China and I’m sure you’ll see a similar domestic result.
Sure, peers matter, and yes, probably competitive people may tend to aggregate in some places but that does not lead to the implications and numbers you drive. It's mostly about bias and network.
> people who went to MIT were in a culture that pushed them the entire time, so they’ll have maximized their talent
It's funny you mention a university which publishes their own tests. I'd like to see a comparison with similar tests from less prestigious university. Calculus/analysis tests seem quite standard, where's the unusual push?
You seem to regurgitate university ads.
It's also funny how the article points how prestige...is much less of a factor for STEM than economics or law...maybe because stem needs results besides prestige?
> Calculus/analysis tests seem quite standard, where's the unusual push?
The tests in standard courses aren't really what's at play. It's about people and the ability to "run into" and work with those people gets people into research networks.
Not all MIT students do that, of course, and it's not an absolute; many people come from less-prestigious schools, but the networking effects stack things against them coming from undergrad and afford them fewer opportunities to "walk into" those circles, depending on the resources their UGs have.
In many EU countries there is a large group of public universities with roughly the same "prestige" and entry is not too competitive. Some might be incredibly hard once you are in, though.
Yes, but let's also not conflate the idea of "brightness" and the qualities of a productive university professor.After all, it's much harder to get into Stanford as an undergrad than it is to get in as a post-doc. What makes someone excel in academia is a genuine passion for knew knowledge, creative problem solving / experimental design, and (yes) the ability to drum up finding to make those discoveries. Rarely is the "smartest" person in the room most capable of being a great researcher. Curiosity, familiarity with the state-of-the-art, and the ability to forge genuine collaborations are far more important than one's ability to do the actual work, I'm afraid (that is, after all, what graduate students are for :)
Academia is a tough pyramid and at the end of the day the only thing that matters for a faculty position is politics and money not even your publications or ability to teach. Those are valued at much less prestigious places (that still produce amazing people)
Why then have harvard and cambridge graduated such a incredibly large fraction of the worlds most productive and famous scientists and mathematicians? Can you please name the italian universities that have produce at the level of cambridge?
I think their point is that the best and brightest have a normal distribution across the world. Irrespective of how bright you are it is an incredibly unlikely event that _all_ these people will be able to have access or funds to start their university at 'elite' universities. Information and monetary assymetry is a thing.
To your point at least in the UK there is a sea of Italian academics from Bologna/Milan/Padua/Torino pursuing further studies or research positions in Oxbridge and other 'Golden Triangle' universities.
Having experienced average universities in my undergrad studies and 'elite' universities as a postgrad I have to seriously agree with GP:
> most great professors in important universities excel at funding, not teaching
The differentiating factor is that elite universities have a halo effect that makes it far more likely to secure funding. This allows for more ambitious projects and equally enables them to attract top talent.
> Why then have harvard and cambridge graduated such a incredibly large fraction of the worlds most productive and famous scientists and mathematicians?
They didn't graduated most of them, they employed them, (e.g. the most recent Nobel recipient Penrose).
Out of 121 Nobel recipients from Cambridge most came from universities you never heard of.
Also: funding.
Academia works like that: the more you publish the more money you get => the more you can research and publish => the more money you get and so on.
Thus hubs that historically did well, will keep attracting more funds and outscore other universities.
No system is perfect. There will always be certain ideas that remain in favor versus others, and a minority of them will be misallocated. Time eventually sorts this out. Having the opposite approach (aka lowest common denominator) will almost certainly be much worse off. We’ve seen this in places like China and Cambodia where cultural revolutions have eliminated the smartest people, and society/progress has suffered greatly from it.
I'm certainly not advocating for lowest common denominator. It is problematic though if for instance in a field the academic tree flows from only 3 grandfathers.
Strong disagree. Getting into a top University is hard but once you are there matriculating isn't. In fact many of these institutions suffer from grade inflation.
This is all based on personal emotions and faux logical assumptions. There’s very little concrete or scientific evidence being presented to back up any of the anecdotes. There’s mention of avoiding mushiness, but ironically that’s precisely what the comforting cognitive miserliness does.
What a strange comment. The article itself gives you the trend. It doesn’t answer the why. I’m giving an insiders perspective to my experience, which is what the best HN comments typically contain.
Should all comments here only be pointers to research? That’s not the community that I’m interested in, as that’s what’s easily accessible already via google.
Something something...those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
The fact is, the best and brightest typically enter the private sector, not academia. Agree about lowering the common denominator, but I don't think that has anything to do with the way tenure is handed out if we're being honest. For instance, diversity of thought is your enemy in academia. Research universities seem to reward parrots.
I’ve been to every kind of level of school (public, private, non-elite, elite). Whenever I’ve had someone from an elite background teaching at a non-elite place has made me feel better about the education I received, and was grateful for it! Relatedly, the expectations in the elite environments were substantially higher, which ended up producing better work from myself because of my peers, culture, and pressure than when I was lacking those in non-elite environments… despite the fact that I’m the same person.
I hate this trend perusing equality by lowering to the common denominator. That’s how you lose competitive edge in the world and end up with a mushy disinterested public. Talent is non-uniformly distributed… we should encourage and have ample mechanisms for the cream to rise to the top regardless of background. Finding ways to identify and prop up talent is what’s culturally lacking. I’ve seen it first hand countless times, and it’s saddened me each time because it’s so wasteful for society and the individuals. We need access to more elite institutions not less!